The presentation deals with representation of space in literary texts of the 17th century Ragusan authors. Following spatial turn in contemporary humanities and social sciences, literary space is approached as a social and cultural product. Focusing on exemplary literary works, it will be shown that literary spaces in the given texts invoke multiple meanings, which are generated by different discourses (historical space, social space, (geo)political space, religious space etc.). Implying multiple demarcations, representation of space in the texts of the Ragusan authors implies the different concepts of collective identities. Preferential space(s) of identity/alterity reveals the auto/raguso/centric perspective and, especially, the 17th century political (and ideological) discourse of the Ragusan aristocracy.

Ivana Brković, Ph.D, is a Senior Assistant at the Department of Croatian Language and Literature (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences), researching and teaching Early Modern Croatian Literature.

She also works on the Research Project “Imagological research of the 16th-19th century Croatian literature”. In February 2011, she defended her PhD thesis on “Semantics of space in the 17th century Ragusan literature”.

The book was published in the “Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography” Series by Springer. It contains selected papers of the “8th International Symposiums on Location-Based Services”, which was organized by Research Group Cartography in November 2011.

Our research group hosted two important meetings of the International Cartographic Association (ICA): The ICA Excecutive Committee Meeting (26–27 November 2011) and the ICA Commission Chair Meeting (24–25 November 2011).

The 8th International Symposium on Location-Based Services took place at Vienna University of Technology from 21 to 23 November 2011. We are happy that after its initiation at TU Vienna in 2002, the conference traveled around the world to come back “home” now.

Pseudocylindrical map projections have in common straight parallel lines of latitude and curved meridians. Until the 19th century, the only pseudocylindrical projection with important properties was the sinusoidal or the Sanson-Flamsteed projection. The sinusoidal has equally spaced parallels of latitude, true scale along parallels, and equivalency or equal-area. As a world map, it has the disadvantage of high shear at latitudes near the poles, especially those farthest from the central meridian.

In 1805, Karl Brandan Mollweide (1774–1825) announced an equal-area world map projection, aesthetically more pleasing than the sinusoidal, because the world is placed in an ellipse with axes in a 2:1 ratio and all the meridians are equally spaced semiellipses. The Mollweide projection was the only new pseudocylindrical projection of the nineteenth century to receive much more than academic interest.

The lecture will start with a brief description of Mollweide’s life and work. The formula or equation in mathematics named after him as Mollweide’s formula will be shown, as well as its proof “without words”. Then, the Mollweide map projection will be defined and formulas derived in different ways to show several possibilities leading to the same result. The inverse equations will be derived as well.

The most important part in research of any map projection is the distortion distribution. That means that the talk has to continue with the derivation of formulas enabling us to gain insight about the linear and angular distortion of the Mollweide projection.

Finally, the ICA logo will be used as an example of a good application of the Mollweide projection. The talk will finish with a comparison of some similar map projections. The map painted on the ICA flag is going to be mentioned. It seems the map was not produced according to the Mollweide projection and is different from the ICA logo map.

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